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Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Hello everyone! I'm blogging here at Club Balai Isabel. I was sent here not to make another memorable vacay. I was, fortunately and unfortunately?, part of the group that facilitated a team building activity for some of my colleagues. For those who have been reading my posts, you are more or less familiar of the number of times I've been here :) and so far, I had my own equal share of good and bad experiences. As much as I wanted to share everything, I think it would be best if I'll leave those negative things behind. For now, allow me to share some shots I captured using Instagram.

Some weeks ago, Janelle emailed me for a possible meet up with Kelley. It took me days to notice and respond to her email. After exchanging a series of text messages, our dream meet up came to reality.

As I was getting ready to go out, I was tested because it started to rain. But I was more determined to meet my blog friends, so no ever weather interruption was enough to prevent me. This was the first time I ever met any of my blog friends. I had no regrets because I met two of the most equally beautiful persons in my life. Kelley enabled us to share and discover ourselves better. I learned a lot from her and a blog post may not be enough to share everything. Janelle is so pretty and energetic. There was never a dull moment with her. She shared some of her experiences which made me admire her more as a person, daughter, mother and wife.

Before we parted ways, Kelley showered us with gifts

Your cake was a hit at home Kelley ! We finished it in less than an hour. I will remember this day for the rest of my life.

LOL! When I started watching the Korean drama series, My Princess, I started to love this man too. Meet my Mr. P! (Song Seung Hon). And yes, the ambitious me is claiming for ownership :D

Back to normal blogging program, here's my 5th Beautiful Sunday post.

The month of flowers will soon be over. This only means that in a few more days, summer is likewise finally over and kids here will be back to school. I was also given my teaching assignment already (Hooray!) and I'm looking forward to meet another set of restless college kids. Before I finally bid my farewell to May 2012, allow me to share some of my captures this month

Friday, May 25, 2012

When I was still studying, I often dreamed of myself as a successful woman who possesses the intellect and the elegance in my everyday attire. I was too ambitious and I failed to realize that somehow, the woman I wanted to be only exists in those famous Hollywood films.

Today, I admit that I never became the woman I envisioned years ago. My success is so far limited as a rank and file employee, humble educator and a struggling freelance writer / researcher. As of dressing up with style and substance, I'm way far from such dream. For one thing, I wear a dull office uniform everyday to work. It's only during Fridays when we are allowed to wear our own clothes. Unfortunately, as much as I wanted to "power dress" I would surely earn those glances and murmurs as soon as I register my attendance in our biometric machine. The "norm imposed" Friday clothes in our workplace are jeans, blouse or a polo shirt. If you go beyond that, you are considered as a stupid alien thrown away on planet Earth. But if I were really to choose, this is the way I wanted to dress

As much as I wanted to wear this, I can't. Why?
1. I will surely be tagged as a pathetic attention seeker.
2. I don't wear heels. You see, the nicest outfit would always match with those towering heels.
3. I commute to work and those dresses are not meant for riding the jeepney and the crowded train.
4. I have huge logs.. I mean legs :) Skirts would just emphasize the muscles I have grown from walking, running and standing and finally..
5. It's not just me. I have always been a lousy and carefree member of the female populace. I was never born with poise and style. I walk as fast as I could. I carry huge shoulder bags enough to house all my necessities. I don't have the time and patience to dress up myself.

But sometimes, the female hormones in me wanted to have my own elegant moment as best depicted in Anne Hathaway's film

I have a confession to make. Whenever I feel fat, ugly and grouchy, I usually play this song in my iPod and walk pretending I'm Andrea of The Devil Wears Prada.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

My antique Nokia E63 is seriously demanding for a break up. It's wifi connection is no longer functioning. The internet browser takes tons of time to load. Some messages in my inbox are suddenly disappearing. Though its against the will of my screaming empty wallet, I purchased a new battery to resuscitate its last breath. The investment was a successful life saving device though.

As much as I wanted to give your much deserved rest, I can't because a number of my clients seemed to forget their responsibility over me. Please...kneeling before you, don't give up on me. I believe we can still patch up and make things work. In the mean time, allow me to recall our best times. Perhaps, this can serve as my mini tribute for you as well.

My best memories with my Nokia E63

1. You're the most expensive phone I bought in my entire lifetime. I accepted a lot of freelance works and skipped some meals just for us to become together.
2. We have been together for 3 and a half years. You see, I'm a very loyal and committed partner. I never owned any other phone apart from you.
3. Three years? This is the longest steady relationship I had.... with a phone :)
4. We were together in those significant events in my life. My MBA graduation, when I broke a number of virginity records :) with my firsts (trekking experience, international research presentation, trips to Hong Kong, Macau and Boracay) birthdays that crossed me from my early to mid 20s, and a number of freelance works were made possible because of you.

As I was stuck in traffic yesterday, I decided to clean you up and to my surprise I have been keeping 500++ messages. To my stupidity, I deleted some special messages and I was left with unnecessary messages from work. But I was able to salvage messages that are still worth keeping or I guess just enough to lighten up my day.

The FM 2009 folder is where I keep the messages from my Financial Management Batch 2009 students. This contain words of gratitude and appreciation I rarely receive these days. When my hometown was hit by the typhoon Ondoy, a number of my students surprisingly showed their concern and worry for me and my family. After 2009 though, I decided not to give away my number to my students. As much as I wanted to help my college kids, I also wanted to have peace of mind especially in those hours when all I wanted was a decent and uninterrupted sleep.

Ate Vanjie is a family friend who gave me useful tips to survive my days in Taiwan. My first trip abroad is actually in Taiwan. If not because of a humble research presentation, I would also not experience the thrill and adventure of traveling in a foreign land ALONE. In case Ate Vanjie is reading this, I'd like to express my huge gratitude again.

I was actually expecting one of my godparents, who works as a nurse in Taipei, to help me reach my destination in Taiwan. Unfortunately, my family later learned that I was mistakenly perceived as a godchild who wanted to take advantage of free accommodation. My mother never uttered her sentiments, but I believe she was sad and disappointed. Ummm, pardon some bragging but I was actually booked for a number of nights at Far Eastern Shangri-La Hotel. I even received a suite upgrade, which made me realize that someone out there wanted to compensate me for some intentional or unintentional mistake.

Typographical error brought about by the sender's excitement, it should be "guess" instead of "guest" This message came from my ever supportive and understanding big boss. He helped and exhausted all means of assistance for my dream presentation. I still remember the day before my flight, everyone in the workplace was in a festive mood. It was the annual employees' awards and everyone enjoyed the night away. I went ahead without bidding goodbye to him. I believe he left late, but he took effort early in the morning to send me some words of support.

I mentioned before that I'm not a fan of forwarded messages. I would rather appreciate self-composed and sincere messages. I only appreciate forwarded messages if it's powerful enough to inspire or cheer me up in the middle of a sad and tiring day.

This message came so timely as I was getting sentimental over a shallow romantic comedy film. I suddenly found words to defend my immature and occasional hopeless romantic attacks.

The text messages I hated to death. If you want to annoy me, send me this kind of message everyday.

I know this is stupid and shallow but I remember receiving this message in the middle of my sleep. As I was savoring a rare opportunity of getting 8 hours of sleep, I woke up annoyed with another forwarded message. To my surprise though, I was later laughing from a non-sense and naughty joke.

Only my Filipino blog friends could understand the first word in this message. To my foreign blog friends, please don't bother to search for the translation. But I believe, this is one of the most real and sincerest new year wishes I've ever received. LOL

Reading this message again made me realize that it's not after all bad to be stuck in traffic. You get to reminisce the past happy days by cleaning up your inbox. But seriously, I'm making this appeal to my beloved E63. I admit I have my shortcomings too. I hide you whenever I'm surrounded with those iPhone and Blackberry units. I shut you down whenever I had a bad day and all I wanted was silence. But you were always with me in those turning points of my life. We've been together for so long. Would you just throw away those 3 years?

My friends will surely disown me after reading this post. But right now, the hopeless romantic in me is dying in the heaven of cheesiness. The one to blame for my hormonal imbalance is the shallow drama series, My Princess.

Some of my Filipino friends might have mistaken my addiction to the local soap opera filmed in Bhutan. Oh please, I’m way too old for that.

The series was aired in a local channel last year but I managed to watch only a few episodes, which I never even understood. Either the air time of the series was in the afternoon or before the late night news, I can’t remember. I think I also saw the teaser once and my attention was caught because of Kim Tae Hee. Back then, my mind was perhaps too preoccupied to accommodate another addiction. When a friend however shared how her own hopeless romantic sentiments sparked up after watching My Princess, it felt contagious so here I am getting infected and plagued by my own cheesiness.

As much as I wanted to purchase a DVD compilation, my DVD player at home finally laid to rest and my underground source of drama series was relocated somewhere out there. Last resort, I patiently watched the fragmented clips in the deep archives of You Tube. (UPDATE: A male, of all people, and MARRIED LOL colleauge came over to give me a complete copy of the series, hooray!)

Before I start my current freelance works, a fast internet connection, my struggling netbook and You Tube became my regular weeknights to dawn companions. I would be up until 2 am patiently searching for the episodes in clips.

And among the many episodes I patiently waited to load, this one triggered my hopeless romantic and cheesiness hormones.

Dear God,

If you will give me my own Mr. P.,

I can let go of those clients who broke my heart and left me with a screaming empty wallet.

I can't imagine the amount of patience needed to have each bead in place. I thought this pair of crocs is already enough to mesmerize me. Everything changed when I saw Cheryl's B-Dazzled car too. Yes, it's a real car that works.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

I never realized how fast my two-month summer or should I say, teaching break went away. May will soon be over and in a few more weeks, I'm back to teaching again. Do I sound sad? It may surprise you but I'm actually happy and thankful for another semester of teaching opportunity. For those who are not familiar with my job, I actually work full time at the Corporate Planning Office of one of the oldest colleges in Manila. I only teach after my 8 am to 5 pm office work. Teaching is only an additional assignment for me. Whenever the college needs additional instructors to handle the remaining courses that the full time professors can no longer accommodate, that's when I came in. Needless to say, my teaching opportunity only arrives as the need arises. Though I may appear only as a contigency or back up resource, I never belittled the job. I see every teaching assignment as an opportunity to fulfill the educator thriving in me.

I was told this morning that I will handle two classes in Economics. Hooray! To my excitement, I'm already searching interesting reading materials for my students. Admit it, Economics is one of the most boring courses you'll ever encounter. So I have to exhaust some means to capture the interest of my restless college kids. :-)

Still talking about my job, I'm handling two freelance works now. I rush home after office and crack my brains to think, analyze and write. Both jobs require me to prepare researches that are a bit out of my comfort zone. I'm still figuring out how to untangle the ropes but hopefully, (please pray for me) I'll be able to accomplish everything on time and later make my clients happy. Speaking about my freelance jobs, I was able to serve three clients over the past months. One of the clients was "unfortunately or fortunately?" a relative and up to this date, they left me hanging in the tree of uncertainty. I fulfilled my responsibility of doing the job, I hope they fulfill their role as a client too.

Since I'm talking about work life in a school, I'd like to share the marketing audio visual presentation of Yale University. I've seen a number of AVPs of colleges and universities, but I find this one so unique and (pardon the informal adjective) cute :-)

Sunday, May 13, 2012

The first beautiful thing that happened to my life was when God decided that you shall become my "nanay."

I have never seen a person as beautiful as you are.

Thank you for making each day of my life beautiful.

I'm looking forward on spending more beautiful days with you.

Happy Mother's Day Nanay!

P.S. Everyone is invited to join my Beautiful Sunday link up. Link any of your post that relates something beautiful. A beautiful photograph, experience or anything that made you consider beautiful is a welcome addition.

Hello!

Thank you for visiting :) My name is Diane and welcome to my home in the blogosphere.

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